Gooding, David: 2 - Forgiveness

This afternoon we began to study together the seventh and the eighth chapters of the Gospel by Luke. Those two chapters form, in fact, the fourth major section of his narrative. We found that in this, these two chapters, there is at one, a- at least one dominant theme, and that is the topic of salvation. So we proceeded to examine the first two stories. They are twin stories of the centurion and his servant and the widow of Nain's son, and found how Christ saved them, one man from dying and the other man from death. We noticed that in that story, the, uh, gospel writer pauses to detail the conditions upon which the centurion eventually received the salvation he asked for his servant. Those conditions were not by merit, nor by worth, nor by works. Similarly, we noted that the widow of Nain had her son raised from the dead, and then our blessed Lord gave him back to his mother. We put those two stories together, as Luke does in his narrative, by observing that they happened the one soon after the other, and we came to a decision on the conditions of salvation, not by worth, not by merit, not by works, it it was by faith. As our Lord remarked, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. It is and was the gift of God. Then we turn to examining the next great story of salvation, which was the, concerning the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee, who received confirmation from the blessed Lord that her sins had been forgiven. So here we observed was another example of salvation, not this time so much the question of life from the dead, but the question of forgiveness that should release her from her guilty past and make her fit to enter decent society once more. So then we notice that with the story of the woman in Simon's house who received forgiveness, Luke has added details of the conversation that there passed between our Lord and Simon. And the burden of that conversation was this, that when forgiveness has been experienced, it leads to love towards the Savior, and that love expresses itself in good works. The, that love to the Savior and those good works are thus the evidence that a person has been forgiven. And with Simon, of course, the evidence was all important for the Lord Jesus to say to Simon that the woman's, uh, the woman had received forgiveness would have borne little weight, for Simon did not accept that Jesus was even a prophet. So our Lord on that occasion appealed to the evidence that even Simon could see, that some great transaction had taken place in this woman's life. Her's many sins had been forgiven. Look, said Christ, at the evidence of it, the works, the love towards me that have flowed from that forgiveness. And along with that, we put the story of those other women, some of them very high class women, who, having experienced salvation at Christ's hands and deliverance from demon possession, some of them, followed him and ministered to him of their substance, so that true forgiveness and salvation lead to affection towards Christ, but also that affection will lead to hard slog in the actual work of the maintenance of his mission. Now, tonight we shall be proceeding to consider the other examples and instances of salvation that Luke records for us in these two chapters. But before we do that, we must take account, to be faithful to our text, of two other great parts of his narrative. Look, if you will now, taking your Bible before you, look at chapter seven, uh, once more. And after the story of the raising of the widow's son to life, we begin in verse eighteen of chapter seven a long passage of discussion. It goes from chapter seven verse eighteen right down to verse thirty five. Then notice the same kind of pattern repeat itself after the story of the, uh, woman in Simon's house and the other women that ministered to him of their substance. In chapter eight verse four, uh, right down to verse twenty one of chapter eight, we have another long part, uh, passage of teaching, the parable of the sower, the parable of the lamp, and the parable, if you like, the metaphor of the family. So what are these two great passages of teaching got to do, if anything at all, with the narratives that ha- we have just been considering? Going back then to the first wodge of teaching in chapter seven verse eighteen onward, we notice that this particular teaching is by Matthew put in a completely different context from what it appears here. So why has Luke put it here? I shall not t- uh, start to discuss with you any justification for that kind of procedure, except to say that we may be very glad that Luke has put this c- discussion here because it will help us now further to define what, uh, uh, uh, the first story had to say. The first two stories have told us that of these people that received salvation, the centurion's servant and the widow of Nain's son. They tell us also that our Lord commented upon the centurion to the effect, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. We skipped over that little bit this afternoon, didn't we? But to be true to the passage, we must come back to it. I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. Our Lord is contrasting the great faith of the Gentile centurion with the meager or complete absence of faith, eh, on the part of many in Israel. And we want to know why. How is it, why is it that a Gentile believed, whereas numerous Jews refused to believe? Why is that? That will lead us back to ask the question of our first story, wherein lay the faith of this centurion? For do you see, it is not just said he believed and therefore received this gift. We are told the argumentation that went through the gentleman's mind as he came to that great expression of faith. Said he, through his messengers to the Savior, look, don't come to my house, don't trouble yourself, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof. But then he added, you see, Lord, he said, you don't need to come to my roof, under my roof anyway. For I am a man set under authority, and because I'm under authority to the emperor himself in Rome, when I say to one of my soldiers, do this, he does it. And when I say go there or come here, he comes at the double because of the authority that I wield in the name of the emperor. I also, said he, am a man set under authority, thereby indicating what he had become, what he had come to perceive about our blessed Lord. That is, our Lord stood under authority, divine authority indeed. So much so that the Lord didn't need to come to his, under his roof, didn't even need to come to his house. Speak the word only, said he, and my servant shall be healed. And you'll notice that therefore his faith in Christ depended on his perception of who Christ was. That's an interesting description of faith, isn't it? Faith is not just believing in the dark. It is a misunderstanding to say that when a person first comes to Christ, they must believe in the dark. God himself offers us all kinds of evidence. The Gospel of John is notable in that regard. Signs galore, that we might come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing and perceiving who he is, then to take that next step of personal faith in him that brings us eternal life. So it was here. Faith is not some emotion that comes over you. Faith rests here upon a perception, a vivid, real, certain perception that this Jesus is who he is. He is a man under authority, and because of it, the man believed and received the blessing that he sought from Christ. If then this Gentile perceived with this remarkable faith, why did not the general run of people in Israel? You see, that can become a practical question for us, can't it? If the majority of people in Israel, having watched and surveyed our blessed Lord, did not perceive that he was the Son of God incarnate and did not believe on him. How will you explain that you do? If the people near at hand, at his elbow, couldn't perceive that he was the Christ, how can it possibly be valid for you to say that you perceive he is after these two thousand years? Have we not to inquire a little historically? Why did they not believe? What was wrong with it or with him? What were the reasons that we can explain to ourselves how it is they failed to perceive who the Lord was and therefore failed to receive the salvation that he so freely offered? It is an encouraging sign, isn't that, isn't it, that Luke has not tried to hide from us the fact that these many in Israel did not believe. But now he gives us two lots of conversation that will expose to us the reasons why they didn't believe and why they fa- failed to perceive exactly who was, who Jesus Christ was. Among the doubts and difficulties, then, that Luke now records, there are two major groups. The one doubt, one lot of doubts were experienced by no less a person than John the Baptist, who, according to Luke, sent his disciples, two of them, unto our Lord, saying, Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another? Genuine doubts on the part of one so eminent as John the Baptist, the forerunner of our Lord. And when our Lord had given the reply to John, then in verse twenty four he began to talk to the crowd and analyze their unwillingness to believe and what it was occasioned by. Two lots of doubts. We may call John's doubts legitimate doubts. The others, we shall find, were perfectly illegitimate. But then many believers have found it, uh, also difficult in their heart to think that John, the God-appointed forerunner of our Lord, should have doubted the Lord Jesus whatsoever. So to explain the request he had to the Lord, art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? So these people have suggested it wasn't a question of doubt on John's part at all. He was absolutely firmly convinced, unshakably persuaded that Jesus was the Messiah. It's just that he had a little mm-mm difficulty about the timetable that the Lord Jesus was adopting, you'll see. John had, uh, uh, preached in his intro- introductory mission. He had preached that the one who came after him was, his fan would be in his hand. He would baptize people in the Holy Spirit, which is something John could not do. But in addition to giving life, thus spiritual life to those who believed, the Messiah would take his fan and thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor. The wheat he would gather into his garner, and the chaff, he'll burn it up with unquenchable fire. So preached John. And adding to the vividness of his message, he said the axe is already laid to the root of the trees, gentlemen. Ha. If you went through a park and saw an axe laying at the root of a tree, you'd say the workman must have gone to lunch, but I s- can see what he's going to do after lunch. He'll take that axe and wield it to the root of that tree, and that will be a goner for the tree. The axe is already laid to the root of the tree, said John, as he warned the people around him to repent. You'll see. And then John had a look round and saw Herod in his palace cavorting with his brother's wife. Miserable example of immorality to the whole nation. And in the name of the coming Ma- Messiah, he rebuked his majesty and commanded him to break off his adulterous relationship. Well, Herod found it a mixture between interesting, fascinating, and objectionable. And he didn't mind sometimes having his conscience tickled by a preacher, if the preacher knew his stuff and could preach. His so-called wife held a different opinion, and, uh, thanks to her, he was not only put in prison, but was there in danger of his life. Now, here comes the explanation by those who think, uh, John didn't doubt the Lord was Messiah. He said to himself, I can't quite understand, of course he's Messiah, but why isn't he, uh, getting on with the job of dealing with the likes of Herod and putting down evil? And why, if you, uh, put a fine point on it, why isn't he opening, openly preaching to the people? Look here, get hold of this. I am the Messiah. Can't you get hold of it? I am the Messiah. Whereas he seems so cautious, and days and months went by without his appearing to claim to be the Messiah. So John came across a plan, just to give a little, the Lord a little spur, you know, sometimes you have to, don't you? I mean to say, when the Lord isn't working according to program, you know, you have to prod him a bit. And, uh, John would follow up this scheme, you see. He'd wait till our Lord was surrounded by a multitude of people, and then he'd send two messengers, and breaking into whatever sermon was being preached, he would pop the question, these two messengers would, you see, before the Lord, now, are you the Messiah? And the Lord would have to answer it, wouldn't he, you see? And then everybody would know and hear it from his lips, his claim that he was the Messiah, and he'd get on with things. So he didn't really doubt. Well, all right, have it that way if you like. But then if you don't agree with the Lord's timetable, and you doubt he's got his timetable right, isn't that some doubt? And of course, for John, this was a very serious matter. He had preached, as I say, that the coming Christ would baptize in the Holy Spirit those who trusted him. That's the positive side. He preached that he would put down evil. It was the timetable of the putting down of evil that worried John. It worried a lot of people since. When I was in process of learning a few Hebrew words in my university, in the class that I attended was a, a, a, a Jewish student. He had lost both his parents in the gas chambers under Hitler. He came from Germany. I remember vividly how on one occasion after lectures he turned to me and said, look here, David, your Jesus isn't the Christ, could not be the Christ, couldn't be the Messiah. I said, how is that, John? He said, you know the Old Testament prophesied that when the Messiah came, he would put down evil, there would be a day of the Lord upon all evil, and the great cedars of iniquity would fall down. And your Jesus just hasn't done it, said he. How can he be the Messiah? Don't you start saying to me, he added, that your Jesus has set up some kind of a spiritual kingdom. The Old Testament doesn't know anything about spiritual kingdoms like that. That's just a get-out that you Christians invented when your Jesus failed to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies and put down evil. I wish I had known enough in those days to answer him. We Christians talk about the second coming, don't we? Your Jewish friends might well ask you where on earth you get the second coming mentioned in the Old Testament. Talks about the coming of Messiah, but the second coming? You say, but that's the plain meaning. Yes, history has shown it so. But what about this whole question of why doesn't, didn't the Lord put down evil? It remains today, doesn't it? It's no good saying that since his ascension he's been busy putting down evil and but hasn't quite succeeded. There's been more evil in this twentieth century than there ever was before. These are genuine doubts, and many believers have shared them all down the centuries, haven't they? What about the believers that were cast in Baturka prison in Moscow simply because they were believers? I wonder how many of them cried to God, oh Lord, thou to whom vengeance belongeth, how long, O Lord? Why do you let evil men play their, eh, their evil sport and torture and shoot your believers? How many Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz prayed in their weakness the words of Psalm ninety four? O Lord, thou to whom vengeance belongeth, how long, O Lord, do you not intervene? Few hearts, maybe, have not felt that problem, problem of the timetable. Our blessed Lord, of course, dealt with it on many an occasion, notably in chapter thirteen of the Gospel by Matthew, when he pointed to what the divine program was to be. He was not going to proceed to set up his kingdom by the sword. He was to proceed by to set the kingdom up by the word. The sower went forth to sow the word. It would be a spiritual kingdom in its first manifestation. And then when it came to this problem of evil, he added the parable of the wheat and the tares, did he not? To the effect that the servants came and asked their master, saying, some evil intentioned person has gone and sown tares amongst the wheat. Wilt thou not that we go now and root up the tares? And the master had said, no, lest rooting up tares, you root up wheat as well. Let both grow until the harvest. And when our Lord explained the parable to his disciples, so he indicated that this was to be the program. Uh, the field is the world. The tares are the children of the evil one. They shall be allowed to grow. There will be no attempt made to uproot them until at the second coming the angels shall be sent forth to deal with the wicked, bundle them up, and consign them to the fate that is their due. That was our Lord's timetable. And of course, as we were so helpfully reminded this morning, the early Christians seized upon a particular verse in the Old Testament as their favorite verse, because amongst other things, it taught them this timetable that God had laid down for the Messiah. Psalm one hundred and ten verse one: Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. No wonder the Christians loved it and thought about it and talked about it and drew out its many implications. Sit thou at my right hand, the Lord said unto my Lord, from that they inferred, as our, our blessed Lord himself did, the deity of Messiah. Sit at my right hand implied a time when he wasn't sitting at the right hand of God, namely his incarnation and earthly ministry. Sit at my right hand, the royal command that made him rise and sit down at the right hand of the Father in glory at his ascension. And what then? Put down evil at once? No, no. This is Old Testament, this is Psalm. I wish I'd known it when I was talking to my friend John Rayner. Yes. Sit at my right hand until. Even the Old Testament indicated that there should be a period between the ascension and the putting down of evil, when God would make his enemies footstool of his feed. If you ask why, what is the why behind that, uh, timetable, then I suppose we should find easy answers, should we not? People have a very naive, simplistic view of how God ought to deal with evil and evil people. The thi- the scheme is you collect all the goodies in one bunch, and then you collect all the baddies in another bunch, and you take a sword and cut the heads off the baddies, and you're left with the goodies, aren't you? It's very simple. And of course, the capitalists said it was obvious who the baddies were. They were the communists. The communists, however, awkward souls, disagreed, and they said the baddies were the capitalists. When God rises up to judge, it won't be a question of degree, will it? But absolute justice. And if God had risen up in the time of our blessed Lord to cut off the heads of all the baddies, how many would have been left? And apart from his great salvation, what about us? Oh, the magnificent mercy of God that arranged that timetable. But the setting up of his kingdom would imply the death of Messiah for us guilty sinners, and the long period when generations might hear the merciful message of the gospel, repent, and thus be saved before the day of judgment arrives. So our Lord, in his kindness, who understands the working of a man's heart, knew what John was feeling. The big problem in his heart that gnawed at him. As he heard footsteps coming down the corridor and hoped this was Messiah come to deliver him or something, and it was the only the jailer with his bread. Heard another lot of footsteps and thought this must be the Savior come. And it was the executioner to take off his head that Herod's wife might present it as a pièce de résistance on the banquet table at her, her so-called husband's birthday celebrations. He knew how to confirm the faith of those that doubt and are called upon to suffer. He said, go and tell John what you hear and see, and list at all those marvelous miracles, not of judgment, but of mercy. These things Isaiah and the prophets had said Messiah would do when he came, these marvelous acts of mercy, moral and spiritual deliverance. Go and tell John what you see and hear. This bit, this bit is being fulfilled. And John, who knew his Isaiah well, would see the relevance of it to what Isaiah had said. This bit is being fulfilled, John. Trust me, that when the time comes, I will fulfill the other bit. That is what the early Christians understood, didn't they? So says Peter in his first chapter of his first epistle. To those who, if need be, were in manifold heaviness through much, uh, trial, while their faith was tried, like a goldsmith will try a lump of, of gold to remove from it the dross. Uh, your faith will be found to praise, honor, and glory, refined and made completely pure at the revelation of Jesus Christ, in whom, though you now s- uh, don't see him, you still carry on believing, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concern with- concerning which salvation the prophets prophesied. When they prophesied about the sufferings of Christ first, and then the glory that should follow. And these good prophets then scratched their prophetic heads and wondered and inquired and prayed, in whom, though you now don't see him, you still carry on believing, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concern with- concerning which salvation the prophets prophesied, when they prophesied about the sufferings of Christ first, and then the glory that should follow. And these good prophets then scratched their prophetic heads and wondered and inquired and prayed. They saw what it's, what the voice said to them. What bewildered them for the time was what time it was about, at what generation, to whom were they, were they meant to be speaking this message? And it was revealed to them that not unto them, but unto us who live in this day and age were they ministering to support and buttress our faith? That in spite of the fact that faith in Christ can often lead you into greater suffering than you knew before, how much and how many times it has done so, even in our recent days. We received, among the thousands of letters that we get, we received one day a letter from a student in Tajikistan. He told us how he had been brought to faith by Baptist Christians in his country. It's a country about eighty percent Muslim. He then added that when he was baptized, his brothers beat him unmercifully. He said, also my father took a knife and he cut my back to ribbons to try and force me to give up my faith in Christ. And then he added in his letter, please, could you send me some literature to explain why is it that we have to suffer when we fir- when we trust the Savior? Because many a Christian felt that under the Romans, when the lions were being starved to be hungry so that they would eat them the more quickly. Why? And what has da- God done to buttress our faith? Why he's had whole generations of prophets wielding their prophetic pens and laying down the program and the timetable of it? So that we might see that Christ has fulfilled the first part of it, and supremely he above all has suffered. The Son of Man must suffer these things and enter into his glory. The sufferings first. One day, for us too, the glory and the day of judgment. Till then, God is long suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should, uh, come to the truth and be saved. Why did John doubt? These perhaps are some of the reasons. This also is the answer that Christ gives. We are not to blame people as though they were deliberate and willful unbelievers who have this problem, the problem of evil and the problem of suffering. And if I ask why, if there's a God in heaven that cares for justice, why does he allow evil to run rampant, apparently unchecked? There are genuine doubts, and for genuine doubts, Christ has answers and evidence. But what of the others? As the deci- as the disciples of John were returning, our Lord began to say to, speak to the multitude concerning John, you'll see. And there were two groups in particular that rejected John. Some were the Pharisees. Of them, our Lord speaks in verse thirty: But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected for themselves the counsel of God, being not baptized of him. Why couldn't the Pharisees see that Jesus was the Messiah? Well, John had proclaimed Isaiah's word. He was the voice in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, the path down which the Lord would come to his people, and to build that path, John demanded that the people repent. Not just repent of having been said an unkind word to their maiden aunts now and again, but radical repentance, symbolized by baptism, in which they own their sinfulness before God and their worthiness in spite of all of judgment, and cast themselves on the mercy of God and on the grace of the Messiah that was about to come down that road to bring them salvation. The Pharisees weren't for repenting. Oh, they would have admitted to a peccadillo here and a peccadillo there, but radical repentance? What do you mean to say that we've got to be saved on the same ground as these prostitutes and tax gatherers? Like the English lady who said, was the preacher really saying she had to be saved on the same ground as her footman? Horrible thought, she thought. These are falsehood prostitutes and tax gatherers. It didn't take them long to admit that they deserved the judgment of God. They knew the condition they lived in. Much more difficult for the Pharisees, wasn't it? It always is. It's so very frequently more difficult for religious people to get converted and saved than it is for out and out sinners. Because the religious people will cling to the idea that religion is there to give you a helping hand, to make you good, and they have seed- succeeded so far. They're not quite sure they're saved yet, and nobody can be, but, um, they hope that by God's grace, perhaps one day they will have done enough good works to qualify for salvation. And when you tell them that salvation is not by works, like the centurion says, it makes them feel direly uncomfortable because they're dependent on works, and when you remind them they're sinners, they will fight it psychologically because they imagine that salvation does depend on works anyway. And the Pharisees rejected the counsel of God by not being baptized of John, not being prepared radically to repent. Is that the reason why many of them didn't perceive that the s- who the Savior was and that he could save them? Exactly so. And that is important fact, isn't it, for us in this day, because we know the human heart. Some of us may have been precisely in that position before our eyes were open to see sense and own ourselves spiritually and morally bankrupt and in need of salvation. And we say, yes, the heart is the same as in all ages. We see it now, why those Pharisees didn't perceive Christ as Savior and Redeemer. But then there were the crowd. And these crowd, for the most part, perhaps the Pharisees also, had gone out in their thousands when John Baptist first began to preach, and many of them had got baptized in Jordan, uh, at the hands of John. But something had happened, hadn't it? For many of those same people now were cooling off and not taking the final steps towards faith in the Lord Jesus, and why? Our Lord began to get at their consciences. I hope I'm wrong in attributing what might sound like sarcasm to our blessed Lord, and if I am, uh, and I'm wrong, um, please may he forgive me. But he began to talk to the crowd about John. Um, tell me, some of you went out into the desert, uh, uh, let me think now, some months ago, didn't you? I think you did, yes. In fact, hundreds of you went back, some thousands went, of you went out into the desert, didn't you? See, yes. Ha ha. Tell me, to see, what did you go out in the desert for? Uh, perhaps it was this, you went out to see a reed shaken with the wind. Well, of course I didn't. What man in his senses would go out into a desert to see a reed shaken in the wind, thousands of the dear things? Nobody ever went out to see them. Oh no, of course not. Well, you did go out, didn't you? What did you go out to see? Oh, I know. A man clothed in fine raiment. Well, no. You wouldn't go to a desert to see that. You might go to a Paris fashion show or something, not out into a desert to see a man dressed up in royal robes. Oh no, of course not. But you did go out, didn't you? Suspect the crowd were getting uncomfortable now. They're like folks that you'll meet today. They're fifty five and they don't like to be reminded that when they were students in the university, they were members of the Student Christian Union. For they made a profession. They don't like to be reminded of it. I suspect by this time our Lord's questioning was probing very deeply into some people's memories and into their consciences. You went out, didn't you, said he, because you believed at that moment that John was the great voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. You believed he was the forerunner of Messiah, didn't you? And that's why you got baptized, some of you, and made such a splash out there in the desert. Well, if John was the Messiah, he witnessed to me. If you believe John was the great prophet, why don't you believe me? Why have you cooled off? Perhaps you think it could be because they had entertained quite false notions of what the Messiah would be. Many of them, even some of the dear apostles, were expecting the kingdom of God immediately to appear, and would freely have taken the sword behind Messiah had he permitted them to. Like many of the Galileans in Galilee. Galilee was a hotbed of political messianism. It was from Galilee that the leaders came who eventually embroiled Israel in their fatal war with Rome, AD sixty to seventy. And some of them would have been hoping, would they, that Jesus was now going to be a political Messiah that would lead the nation against the Romans and would, in the end, be triumphant with the help of an angel or two, like the Maccabees. And then Israel would be saved, wouldn't they? They, well, certainly had better houses than they were living in now, and most of them would be a two-chariot family and all the other things that would come with being, uh, freed from Roman domination, you will see. I mean, surely Christ was concerned with politics, wasn't he? When it became and began to be apparent that Jesus wasn't, they were not so sure about him. And when he started insisting on this radical repentance business. And reminding them of what John had stood for, not just splashing about in water as a religious, uh, experience of a little high emotion, but radical repentance before God and works that manifested that repentance was real. And they were not sure they liked him. And they began to make their excuses. John came neither eating nor drinking, they said. Ha ha, just listen to him out there raving his head off about judgment to come. I mean, the man's got a demon, I should think. Oh, oh, I see. And the son, he came eating and drinking. They liked that, didn't they? They said, yes, we didn't like that judgment stuff, hellfire preaching and all that shouting out in the desert there, um, but no, this Jesus is the one we... No, he didn't. He came eating and drinking, and they said, the whole of wine bibber and a glutton. Oh, you're like children in the marketplace, says Christ, you neither have this nor that. Neither the mourning nor the dancing. You want a convenient little religion as a veneer to your political aspirations. Years ago, more than I care to think, some Christians in the city of Cambridge in England held a- a tent campaign, gospel campaign, they were popular those days, i- in the suburbs of Cambridge. And I did my little bis- bit to assist. One evening, at the end of the service, the- a preacher had been holding forth, I think it was the last night of his campaign, and with due faithfulness, and I thought due sobriety as well, he had preached on the alternatives, faith and salvation, or refusal and rejection of the gospel, and eternal damnation. After the session, some friend came and pointed out to me that there was a gentleman present. He was a barrister or lawyer of some kind, and he was, well, like one of your volcanoes here in New Zealand. He was sort of erupting at the top. And, uh, aha, so I was asked to come and talk to him. I did find him very angry and indignant. Just listen to that fellow said, he's standing there raving, that loud voice about the wrath to come and all that stuff. I'm one of those, you see, who like to lead people to Christ, to God by the love of God, you know, draw them to God by his love, instead of all that hideous shouting about hellfire. I was brash and insensitive in those days, perhaps I'm still. I, I fell to asking in what tone of voice he thought John the Baptist preached when he said, who have warned you to flee from a wrath to come. That didn't help. So, uh, uh, a friend of mine just asked would, uh, would he care, the lawyer care to come home to supper? And yes, he would consent to come. I traveled in a different car with my host, and I said, would that not be better, do you think, when we get home, not to continue this, this, this conversation about the wrath of God, but to talk about the love of God? So we agreed with that. And when he came and the coffee had been served and the buns eaten and P- he was in a more sober and tranquil mood, we fell to talking about the love of God. How marvelous is the love of God, who knows so loving that he not only gave his son to die that we might forgive- be forgiven, but so loving that he could assure you here and now in this life that you have complete forgiveness. And we quoted, of course, the lovely words of John five twenty four: cometh not into judgment, but is already passed from death unto life. Oh, how great the love of God. He doesn't say he'll forgive us, but he won't tell us. He tells us forthwith and assures us we shall never come into judgment. You might have thought the, the lawyer would have loved that, wouldn't you? No, he said that was nonsense. You can't know yourself saved. I said, that's odd because one John five says, doesn't it? These things I write unto you that believe, that you may know that you have eternal life. Oh, shut that book, he said. I've had enough of that book. Curious, isn't it? It wouldn't have the wrath of God, but it wouldn't have the love of God. How contradictious the human heart could be, can be. It is sorrow that we watch these ancients thus treat our Lord. Sorrow that we look upon people like that lawyer, who think they are being religious, but neither have the judgment of God, nor the love of God. Because that is the diagnosis, and we know it to be true by our own experience of the human heart in our own day. We come to our decision, don't we, as to why so many fail to perceive that Jesus was the Christ. That does nothing to take away from the validity and the strength of his claims. We noticed also at the beginning of this talk that the story of the women- woman in Simon's house and of those other women that so nobly followed the Lord and ministered to him of their substance is followed by a long account of the teaching of our Lord that he gave in the form of parables, chapter eight, verse four down to, uh, verse eighteen. Those parables are very well known, and I do not propose at this late hour to expound them in detail. But what have they got to tell us? Well, let's rehearse things so far. The centurion and the widow of Nain's son. That told us that, uh, salvation, new life is given as a gift, not upon works, nor merit, nor worth, but by faith, and that is a gift. Righto. This next thing that we have been now considering says, and what is faith? Faith is perceiving who Christ is, and basing our faith upon that, appealing to him, confident that his word can do what we ask. Then why didn't people believe? And we have searched the reasons why they didn't perceive he was the Christ or believe it either. But when we look at the parables in this place by Luke, in this particular context, after the woman in Simon's house, we perceive their relevance to that lesson. The woman in Simon's house, she got forgiveness, but the lesson we found was this, that where people have been forgiven, it leads to works. That is the evidence that they have been forgiven. Of course, if the evidence isn't there, raises big questions, doesn't it? We bet- perhaps better s- better pause a moment to make a thing clear in our thinking. We should distinguish, shouldn't we, the conditions of salvation, that is the conditions that have to be fulfilled if a person will be saved, and the evidence of salvation. Yes? They're two different things. Let me illustrate it in spite of my profound ignorance about the matters I'm about to relate. I'm told that when a baby is born, the midwife gets this poor thing, holds it up by its ankles upside down, and delivers a smart smack on its anatomy at the point that has been arranged for that purpose. And at that point, the, uh, babe lets out a yell, and everybody says, hurrah! Perhaps that's the last time they'll say hurrah when a baby cries, but this time they say hurrah. Why? Well, because that cry is the evidence that the baby's alive. It's not the condition that had to be fulfilled to getting life, obviously. The baby gets its life as a complete gift, but when it is alive, it will give evidence that it is alive, yes? And if the baby never cried then nor thereafter, then that would be a case for serious worry, wouldn't it? We get eternal life through faith, not by works. Faith, repentance and faith, these are the conditions for receiving life. But then there's the question of the evidence that we have got life. That's another story, isn't it? And the parable of the sower and its accompanying parables are there to emphasize this very thing. How do you know which seed is good? How do you know which people are genuine believers? Because you can tell the good seed, because it not only sprouts up, uh, brings forth fruit with endurance. There's no other way for a plant to bring forth fruit anyway, but endurance. No use, said our Lord, the seed sown upon the rock. Because the rock is warm, the ground, the earth's shallow, it sprouts up immediately, but when tribulation comes, withers away because it has no root. These then are those that hear the word and anon with joy receive it and believe for a little while, says our Lord. If our Lord says they believe for a little while, we mustn't contradict him. But what use is faith that is for a little while? But no use whatsoever. There are forms of faith that are no use, aren't they? There were many in Jerusalem, says John chapter two, that believed on him when they saw the miracles. Our Lord didn't commit himself to them. There was a group of men in John eight who claimed to believe on the Lord Jesus. Said our Lord to them, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They said, free from what? He said, from sin, gentlemen. Everybody that constantly commits sin is a slave of sin. They said to him, you better go and preach in the next street, haven't you? Who asked you to come here? Don't you know that we are children of Abraham? We have God for our father. How dare you insult us and suggest that we are slaves of sin? Go out! They believed, did they? It wasn't long before our Lord was saying that far from being children of Abraham and children of God, they were of their father, the devil. True faith endures and brings forth fruit with persistence. I trust I shall not, by say- so saying, cause problems and worries and fears in the hearts of true believers. Because of that, in our next session, we shall come back to this matter a little bit more, so as not to, uh, uh, raise fears where there should be no fears. My point just for tonight as I close is to emphasize this, that these parables at this juncture in Luke are not misplaced. They're there by Luke's deliberate intention, because they are carrying on the lesson that we learned with the woman in Simon's house and those other women. They got salvation and forgiveness as a gift, utterly unconditional, but because their forgiveness was real, they gave evidence of it in their works. And the parable says, yes, and the mark of the good seed is that they bring forth fruit with endurance. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank thee for the faithfulness of thy dear Son, our Lord. We bless thee for the wonderful, expansive love of the God that he made known to us, and the wonder of a salvation that is without conditions, save repentance and faith, and is entirely a gift. Unitedly, all of us who have known that forgiveness and know that new life, we call upon our hearts to bless thy name this very moment. We thank thee for our Lord's faithfulness, his penetrating diagnoses of the human heart. Blessed Lord Jesus, this very night, look into our hearts, we beseech thee. Find there, we pray, evidence that we have been truly forgiven. Forgive our inconsistencies. Help us in life's race to run with patience and endurance the path that is set before us. And having this hope that one day we shall be like thee, to give evidence that we have the hope by purifying ourselves, even as thou art poor, pure. So bless our study, for thy son's name's sake. Amen.